Oracle Bows to Watchdog Over ‘Misleading’ IBM Claims

The National Advertising Board has slapped Oracle for running a "misleading" ad about IBM's Power servers

Oracle will bow to a national advertising board and stop running ads that claim its Exadata machines are better than IBM’s Power systems.

IBM had filed a complaint with the National Advertising Division (NAD) — the division of the Better Business Bureau that reviews advertising for truthfulness and accuracy — over public claims that Oracle’s Exadata machines are 20 times faster than competing machines from IBM. The NAD eventually found that Oracle had not provided enough evidence to substantiate the claim and that it had painted anecdotal evidence — the experience of a “large European customer” — as something much larger.

Oracle declined comment on the NAD’s decision. But the NAD says Oracle said that it would remove the ads and that it would appeal the finding. As of this posting, the ad was still on the internet.

“IBM is pleased the National Advertising Division recommended that Oracle discontinue the use of what it described as an ‘overly broad claim’ in the ad,” said IBM vice president Jeff Cross. “We believed Oracle made false, misleading and deceptive claims in violation of advertising law.”

While the ads were running — there was a full page spread in the Wall Street Journal — Oracle’s website provided a more detailed account of the power and performance of its Exadata machines. But the NAD said that more was required.

“Even if Oracle’s website disclosure was acceptable – and had appeared clearly and conspicuously in the challenged advertisement — it would still be insufficient because an advertiser cannot use a disclosure to cure an otherwise false claim,” read a statement from the NAD.

This isn’t the first time IBM has sicced the NAD on Oracle. In April, IBM disputed Oracle claims that the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 data storage systems run Oracle and Java software twice as fast as IBM’s P795 servers. The board ruled that these were misleading, and Oracle stopped running those too.